So I took the cat to the vet today, as he needed his vaccinations. We have to vaccinate him as otherwise we can’t throw him carelessly into kennels as we jaunt airily around Victoria. Oh, and we want what’s best for him and stuff. Anyway, there is a deal going with one of the premium dried food companies: buy 2 bags, get a free cat carrier. Once we determined that yes, this range did have a hairball control variety, we were off like a bride’s nightie. Our current cat carrier is actually the large export carrier that the cat came over from New Zealand in – it has chicken mesh windows, is sturdily constructed of plywood, and has cool stickers on it that say things like “THIS WAY UP” and “1 x LIVE CAT”. However it weighs approximately five times as much as the actual cat, and is so large that it takes up valuable floor space in the spare room. Several of our smaller houseguests have unpacked their luggage neatly into the cat carrier, mistaking it for the wardrobe. So we needed a small cat carrier, and this one is about the size of a gym bag. Sweet! All I had to do today was stuff the cat into this new carrier. Do you know how big my cat is? About the size of a gym bag. He filled the new cat carrier to capacity and overflowed in a profusion of claws and fur. But by God, I may be smaller than most people but I’m bigger than the cat, and I got him in there with minimal damage to my hands. And legs. And shoulders. Cue the soulful yowling and we were off!

What did I learn at the vet? No matter how many times the vet passes the microchip reader over the cat, if the cat has not been microchipped it will not beep. Also, that it costs a hefty sum of money to insert a microchip … but you do get to hear your cat make a cool beeping sound, much like a cyborg cat. He’s part machine! He’ll be back!

Also, do not turn your back on your cat when the vet has left the room to get the microchip reader and said cat is hunched unhappily on the cold steel table. As you turn away, out of the corner of your eye you will see the cat fling himself gracelessly off the table and skitter straight towards the vet’s bookshelves. There he will lodge himself on the lowest shelf, behind the model of a heart. I am fully qualified to tell you that it is the devil’s own job getting a cat out from behind a plastic heart.

I have fish and chips for dinner, since we bought some gourmet potatoes today. Those words really don’t go together, I admit. But we are Potato Snobs. I scorn you, Desiree! Begone, Nicola! We got some King Edwards and some Otway Reds but decided to leave the kipflers. Mmm, homemade chips.

I have New Zealand Cadbury chocolate, brought over by our recent houseguests. It is definitely nicer than the Cadburys here. Sorry, Tasmania! All your good milk must go into the cheese and there is none left for the chocolate. Actually, I used to prefer Nestle chocolate (the only person known to man to do so) but they changed their recipe and forced me to begin looking for other chocolate, with the proviso that it does not cost a frabjillion dollars (I’m looking at you, Lindt). I know, my life is so hard.

What else do I have? A new Crumpler camera bag, which does not look like a camera bag; red-and-white striped Pippi Longstocking socks (I’m wearing them now); a cat, eyeing me off because he wants to sit on my lap where the laptop currently is; and one of the innumerable CSI variants on TV. It’s all good, apart from the CSI thing. Another thing I have is the remote. I will be employing this momentarily.

Well Mr. T has returned, from whence he came; so now there is another person in the house so Beware stalkers! (Actually, i’ve never really much feared stalkers and night wanderers and soforth. Must be due to the two giant dogs in the house, with the barking and the sleeping in front of the front door and the vigilant chasing of fearsome neighbourhood cats.) Regardless. Mr. T took a whistlestop tour through the Southern states including Georgia, Oklahoma, Texas, one of the Carolinas I forget which, and another state which escapes me. I’m sorry, Northern Hemisphere people. I am very bad at your states. I fare just as badly with Canada, the cantons of Switzerland and the relative positions of Sussex and Essex. Anyway, back to the globetrotting adventures, not that I’m bitter, of Mr. T. Although he did have to do lots of work though, so I am way less jealous than I otherwise would be. Also, the bringing home of the presents has been most satisfying. Mr. T, as is his overly-researching way, stuck to Expensive things that he would otherwise not have bought in Australia. Hence the business shirts (I forget which flavour; US$22 vs Aust$80); many, many, OK three, pairs of Timberlands (US$125 vs Aust$350-ish); Aveda stuff (don’t know vs don’t much care); and my personal favourite, late Christmas present and undisputed Champion New Favourite Toy: the Canon Digital Rebel XT (US$shitloads vs Aust$close to double).

You’d think I’d post a photo to this post, wouldn’t you? You would be wrong. I am having too much fun yelling at the dogs to “work it, work it!” and have not yet fussed with my downloaded pictures. Soon, honestly. But not tonight (Josephine). Mr. T told me on Sunday night that two of our good friends from NZ are coming over to stay for a week. They arrive Tuesday. That’s tomorrow. So I have to go now, and wash them some sheets. Because that’s just the kind of host I am. All clean linen, plus one curious cat who will undoubtedly want to crawl into the clean linen with you. No charge!

It has come to my attention that my site looks ratshit in Opera. Sorry, opera people. I am too lazy to fix it. I do have Opera on the big computer but I am too lazy to start it up and check the site on it there. Again, sorry. Then again, I guess if I were really sorry, I would immediately begin fixing the site. But I won’t. I blame Opera, not me. You’re the guys with the Phantom.

My hair is too long and needs to be cut. Any volunteers? I am going for the simple cut as all the layered bits have almost grown out. You’ll just need to be able to cut across the bottom of straight hair, in a straight line. You can put some colour through it too. I’m thinking some dark blondes and maybe some caramel colours, go for darker hair this winter? … yes, well, I appreciate your opinion but I don’t think green streaks will … yes, absolutely we can give it a go, after all, you’re the one with the sharp scissors. I woul

HOly crap. I just sat on my mouse by mistake and closed the Firefox window. You know what? The Blogger “recover post” feature TOTALLY WORKS. To think I could have lost this priceless communication! I’m sure we all agree the world is richer for this literary contribution.

IN other news, my laptop spacebar key seems to have recovered. This pleases me, in a quiet way. You know what doesn’t please me? The mini Bounty bar, chewed up and spat out on the dog mat in the lounge. That was MY mini Bounty bar. YES, I left it on the floor of the bedroom. YES, it has been there since the weekend. YES, I have no great love for Bounty bars, hence I hadn’t eaten it. NO, it doesn’t mean I wanted a dog to steal then gnaw on it. In fact, it’s safe to assume I do not want dogs to steal and/or gnaw on ANYTHING on the floor of the bedroom. I hope we’ve reached an understanding here.

(Of course I assume that the dogs read my blog. What else have they got to do all day?)(…eat chocolate, I suppose.)

I wanted to go to bed last night, so I turned off the laptop then flicked through all the channels on the TV just to make sure I wasn’t missing anything. Please note I wasn’t watching TV as such; it was just on, to provide me with a soundtrack. (Please also note that this little laptop has one speaker approximately the diameter of an eyeball, producing a tinny and faraway sound not unlike being inside a submarine. Or what I would imagine being inside a submarine would sound like. Anyway, that’s why I wasn’t listening to music. But still doesn’t explain why I felt the need to explain myself in such detail.) So while flipping channels I ended on SBS and so played “Guess the Movie Origin”; this particular movie was French, so not hard for me to figure out. And, as so often happens with me and SBS, I got sucked into the movie. (For those not in the know, SBS plays lots of foreign language programs, particularly arthouse and world movies; I love SBS, it’s one of the best things about Australian TV.) The movie was Les Diables, about an abandoned brother-sister pair and the brother’s struggles to keep them together and find their way home (the sister Chloe is autistic or otherwise mentally locked within herself). Good movie; thought-provoking movie; can’t stop thinking about the movie. Very European movie.

And then … I kept watching SBS. Because there is something wrong with me in that I CANNOT go to bed. Do you know what was on after this challenging arthouse film? The Nanny. But! Not really The Nanny … but a TURKISH REMAKE of The Nanny. Internet: you MUST find this show and watch it. It is like a trainwreck. Have you ever seen The Nanny? Of course you have. You know how The Nanny is dreadful, dreadful TV? Of course you do. Now, imagine all the characters from The Nanny … BUT TURKISH. They are still all the same characters … over-the-top nanny, elderly wisecracking butler, snobbish blonde business partner … BUT TURKISH. Even the sets are the same – same staircase, same lounge room layout … BUT TURKISH. It is hard to comprehend. It is like you are watching, and you understand, but something has gone wrong with your ears and you can’t comprehend the language. Yet it is The Nanny. It was surreal. Far more surreal than the French arthouse film; and it wasn’t even trying.

OK so I will warn you now, the spacekey on this laptop is beinga bit temperamental. It is because I left it out on the floor in frontof the heater (where of courseIwas lying surfing the net, it is WINTER here inthe Southern Hemisphere, with frost and fog and THE FOG, it is impossibleto drive in the fog! How i hate my fellow man!) Anyway, I may have left the laptopon the floor when I went to get a drink, and the cat may have laid (lain? lay? collapsed?) down besideit, and the Brown Dog may have jumped in a grasshopper-like manner towardsthe cat, with love in his heart of course, and he may have landed with onegiant paw heavily on the laptop keyboard, causing a slight grinding sound. But I can’t attest to this in acourt of llaw. Llaw? Welsh law. Either that, or the Brown Dog has tampered with the L key also. I wouldn’t put anything past him.

Mr. T is back ina day or so and he has PRESENTS for me, presents, yes yesss my precioussss. According to him, the streets in America are paved with gold and everyone says “howdy” and Lightbeer is still alcoholic and it isa mistake to drink with Canadians. I don’t know why. And I think he’s lying about the gold streets thing. Alsothe thing about the strip clubs. I bet they’re not mandatory at all.

My hair hurts because I have had it parted on the opposite side to usual. What do you mean, you don’t care? You TOTALLY care. I have no one to listento my little inanities and you are hereto fill the gap. So LISTEN. OK, so apart from the hair, I got my new boots and they’re abit tight around the ankle, and my ankles are stillsore from wearing my high high shoes to that thing on Thursday night (oh, I forgot to tell you about Thursday night? I’ll come back to it) andso I sort of had to wear the boots unzipped a bit, but I was wearing my Barbie socks (I CAN’T HELP IT if the socks in the 8-12 year old section fit me better, ok?) and they are, quite obviously, pink; so I’m sitting in this meeting today, freely scattering my learned opinion around, when I realise that you can totally see my pink stripey socks and my corporate image is RUINED, just ruined. Actually when I got home I found my singlet was on inside out as well, that’s OK though as I was wearing my new Allanah Hill top and you couldn’t see the singlet. Hey, can you get me a drink? Also, while you’re up, there’s washing in thedryer that needs to be folded. And the cat needs to be fed. Hey, where are you going? I was TALKING.

So, OK, Mr. T is away so all you guys are getting is recycled emails. Sorry. I’ll try to cut the more boring bits. If I forget to take out any names or private jokes, just nod and smile and pretend you know what’s going on.

It is a beautiful day but OH GOD SO COLD. I made the bed and went back into our room a bit later and there was a tunnel in the bed, the Cat had crawled in and was huddled up under the duvet. He eyed me with fiery hatred when I flipped up the duvet to see him. Tonight I had the heater on for the first time this year, smelled like burning at first but good now. Does that mean the gas pilot light was on all summer? Isn’t that like a total fire risk? And is it really supposed to be making that burning smell? Anyway, totally don’t care if I asphyxiate myself because did I mention? FREEZING MY ARSE OFF. Brown Dog is standing looking out the back door (he wants to go out) and I can see his breath.

I went to Chadstone today and bought a T-shirt with robots on it and ordered some boots, so I continue flagrantly wasting money. And I rented some DVDs to fill in my lonely nights, you will be really gutted you missed them, I got “Shall We Dance” with Richard Gere and J.Lo and “Mean Girls” with Lindsay Lohan. Don’t worry I will fill you in on all the details once I watch them. Or maybe we could get them out again when you get back! Like, oh my god that would be so cool! We could have like, a total DVD watching night together! DVD Fest 2005! (OK I’m annoying myself now.)

I attacked the jasmine with the secateurs today, frankly I think I might have butchered it a bit too enthusiastically. Vines grow back, right? I think the fence is [OK this is boring and I will spare you. Mr. T had to read it all though, ha!] all these little fig-type things. Who knew?

Hey I went to the gym and it seems [God, this is boring too. I need a copywriter to edit my life] will be on Thursdays as well as Mondays. I can be a gym monkey! Junkie! … no, monkey is better. Gym tarsier! Gym bonobo!

Anyway I am very busy and important and must go patrol the perimeter. Give me a call when you get your time zones sorted out – talk to you soon.

Do you know what’s on TV this time of night? Psychic investigator programs, ads for dating and SMS pr0n services, and awful, awful american sitcoms. Ooh, and ad for Barbie Slumber Party Mix #3! It has Beyonce! (Shouldn’t it have, I don’t know, the Wiggles or something? And what the hell sort of little girl would be up at midnight watching these pr0n ads, yet simultaneously desire a Barbie CD?) But I digress. Back to my griping about shitty TV programming late, late in the night! When I am so tired! But going to bed does not yet seem a viable option! Everyone else is asleep; including of course the dogs, who had a long walk this evening and are plumb tuckered out. But not me. Or the cat, it seems, as he is walking up the hall … oh, he is lying down. OK, so just me then. Up. Awake. Fixing a graphical inline annoyance in Thunderbird. Hell yes it has to be done now! Also, downloading iTunes. It’s all vitally important! Crucial! … oh who am I kidding.

I was horribly hungover most of Sunday. My mistake? Ending with a blue drink. People, the coloured drinks spell Doom. DOOOOOOOM. At least for me. I am going to find the person who gave me that Blueberry Vodka Cruiser, and I am going to glare at them. Because I still haven’t recovered enough energy to do anything else. I still see its virulent blueness lurking behind my eyes. SO BLUE! Nothing needs to be that blue. Oh God.